The Ethics of Capital Punishment

A Philosophical Investigation of Evil and its Consequences

Matthew H. Kramer

Presents accessible critiques of the standard arguments advanced for the death penalty, making valuable introductory reading for students studying the topic

Develops a novel justification for capital punishment that will become an essential reference point for future arguments over the practice

Anchors the morality of capital punishment in a philosophical theory of evil and its consequences that will be of relevance and interest to normative ethicists working beyond criminal law theory

The Ethics of Capital Punishment

A Philosophical Investigation of Evil and its Consequences

Matthew H. Kramer

Description

Debate has long been waged over the morality of capital punishment, with standard arguments in its favor, grounded in the values of retribution or deterrence, being marshalled against familiar arguments against the practice. In The Ethics of Capital Punishment, Matthew Kramer takes a fresh look at the philosophical arguments on which the system of state execution should stand or fall, and develops a novel, controversial argument in its justification.

The book pursues both a project of critical debunking of the familiar rationales for capital punishment and a project of partial vindication. The critical part presents an accessible and engaging critique of major arguments that have been offered - from the deterrence of future wrongdoing to the justice of
retributory killing - arguing that they all fail to justify current practices of state execution. These chapters, suitable for use in teaching courses on the death penalty, offer a valuable restatement of the current debates over the morality capital punishment.

The book then presents an original justification for the death penalty, one that is free-standing rather than an aspect or offshoot of a general theory of punishment. Its purgative rationale, which has not heretofore been propounded in any contemporary philosophical and practical debates over the death penalty, derives from a philosophical reconception of the nature of evil and the nature of defilement.

As the book contributes to philosophical discussions of those phenomena, it also contributes importantly to
general normative ethics with sustained reflections on the differences between consequentialist approaches to punishment and deontological approaches. Above all, the volume contributes to the philosophy of criminal law with a fresh rationale for the use of the death penalty and with probing assessments of all the major theories of punishment that have been broached by jurists and philosophers for centuries. Although the book is a work of philosophy, it is readily accessible to readers who have not studied philosophy. It will stir both philosophers and anyone engaged with the death penalty to reconsider whether the institution of capital punishment can be an appropriate response to extreme evil.

The Ethics of Capital Punishment

A Philosophical Investigation of Evil and its Consequences

Matthew H. Kramer

Table of Contents

1. Introduction2. Deterrence through Capital Punishment3. Death and Retribution4. Death as Incapacitation5. Death as a Means of Denunciation6. The Purgative Rationale for Capital Punishment7. The Death Penalty in Operation

The Ethics of Capital Punishment

A Philosophical Investigation of Evil and its Consequences

Matthew H. Kramer

Author Information

Matthew H. Kramer is Professor of Legal & Political Philosophy at the University of Cambridge; Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge; and Director of the Cambridge Forum for Legal & Political Philosophy. He is the author of a dozen previous books and the co-editor of four other books.

The Ethics of Capital Punishment

A Philosophical Investigation of Evil and its Consequences

Matthew H. Kramer

Reviews and Awards

"The book's provocative thesis, connecting moral philosophy with legal scholarship, will surely occupy a position of importance in ongoing debates within criminal law."
--Harvard Law Review

"Matthew Kramer's book The Ethics of Capital Punishment is a significant achievement. Not only does it offer a thorough and up-to-date discussion of traditional justifications for the death penalty, it also attempts to offer an alternative, novel justification for it, something that Kramer calls the purgative rationale. Although I am not entirely sympathetic to this aim, I think that carving out a new territory within this already crowded intellectual space is something which ought to be commended." - John Danaher, Philosophical Disquisitions

"Hannah Arendt ends Eichmann in Jerusalem with a statement about the sentencing of Adolf Eichmann: "we find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be expected to want to share the earth with you." Kramer's excellent new book develops an original line of argument that echoes that Arendtian sentiment into what he calls the purgative justification for capital punishment. Kramer's book is a well-argued and inventive work that will generate new avenues of discussion in legal and moral philosophy."
-- Eric M. Rovie, Political Studies Review